Slideshow

venerdì 29 maggio 2015

Here are the teams who will play the first qualifying round of the 2015/2016 Champions League, between 30 June and 8 July. They are the winner of the last 8 European national leagues (based on the UEFA ranking):Crusaders (Northern Ireland)The New Saints (Wales)Pyunik (Armenia)Levadia Tallinn (Estonia)B37 Torshavn (Faroe Islands)Folgore (San Marino)FC Santa Coloma (Andorra)Lincoln Red Imps (Gibraltar)

giovedì 28 maggio 2015

Thanks to Sevilla, who yesterday won the Europa League, Spain will have 5 teams in the next season's Champions League.As stated by the UEFA rule 3.08 regarding the Champions League,

"Exceptionally, an association may be represented by five clubs in the competition
if the UEFA Champions League and/or UEFA Europa League titleholder does not
also qualify through its domestic championship."

Since Sevilla ended at fifth place in the Spanish League, the teams qualified are:

Valencia (to the play-off, since they ended at the fourth place in the domestic league).

It doesn't matter if Barcelona will win or not the Champions League against Juventus, since they won the domestic league and they are already qualified.Following the new regulations, it is the first time that the Europa League's winners have access to the Champions League, and of course it is the first time that an association will have five teams in this Cup.

mercoledì 20 maggio 2015

Starting from the next season's Champions League, there will be a change regarding the seeded teams in the Group Stage, which will be the title holders and the champions of the top seven associations (based on their 2014 UEFA country coefficients).Since the 2014-2015 Champions League will be won either by Barcelona or Juventus (both national champions), and Spain and Italy are both among the top seven association, also the champions of the eighth association will be a seeded team.The next season's seeded teams will therefore be:Barcelona (Spain)Bayern Munich (Germany)Chelsea (England)Juventus (Italy)Benfica (Portugal)Paris SG (France)Zenit Saint Petersburg (Russia)PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands)Until now, the eight seeded teams where decided following the UEFA ranking for clubs.As you can see, the main difference is that Real Madrid won't be a seeded team, since they won't win the Spanish League nor the Champions League.

sabato 9 maggio 2015

Netherlands, England and Ireland will get an extra place in 2015/2016 Europa League, after topping UEFA's Respect Fair Play rankings.The three associations will be entitled to enter the club that has won their domestic top-division fair play competition.

As stated in the official UEFA website, among the criteria to determine the ranking there is also the "behaviour of the crowd".Maybe the behaviour is considered only inside the stadiums, otherwise UEFA should explain how can it be possible that Netherlands ranked first after what Feyenoord fans did in Rome on 19 February.